Archives West Finding Aid

According to the American Alpine Club Annals, Dora Keen became the first woman to mountain climb in Alaska. Born in 1871, Dora Keen defied social norms of the day by taking up mountain climbing and traveling in her late thirties, after obtaining an education from Bryn Mawr. One of the world's first female mountaineers, she was the first person ever to climb the peak of Mt. Blackburn. The highest peak in the Wrangell Mountains range, Alaska, Mt. Blackburn is considered the fifth highest peak in the United States and the twelfth highest peak in North America. Covered almost entirely by icefields and glaciers, Mt. Blackburn is the primary source of ice for the Kennicott Glacier and contributes a large volume of ice to the north flowing Nabesna Glacier and the Kuskulana Glacier system.

Keen's 1911 expedition to Mt. Blackburn was a groundbreaking trip for mountaineering. It was the first expedition to use dogs on a mountain, the first to succeed without Swiss guides, the first to camp in snow caves, and the first to make a prolonged night ascent. Her first expedition to the peak was undertaken with only four gold-miners, Charlie McGonagall, Pete Anderson, Billy Taylor and Tom Lloyd, and a team of sled dogs. After multiple attempts to reach the summit via various routes, inadequate supplies and bad weather forced the party to turn back after two weeks. Keen returned to Mt. Blackburn with George W. Handy to successfully reach the summit on May 19, 1912, via the Kennicott Glacier and East Face. Dora Keen and George Handy married four years later. In 1960 when the first of the USGS maps were published, it was discovered that the eastern peak (now called Mt. Kennedy) climbed by Keen, was the shorter of the two peaks of Mt. Blackburn.